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You are here: Home / Archives for photography

Songs About A Girl by Chris Russell

December 12, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

 

16-year-old aspiring photographer receives an invitation to take backstage photos for a chart-topping boyband and is launched into a world of bloggers, paparazzi and backstage bickering – a debut novel that has been described as Geek Girl with boy bands.

Watertstones

Filed Under: YA Tagged With: music, photography

Read80: School Library Association Photography Competition Announced

August 30, 2016 By achuka Leave a Comment

SLATo mark the School Library Association’s birthday in 2017 a photographic competition ‘Read80’ has just been announced to celebrate reading for pleasure and the impact school libraries have.

Competitors are encouraged to take photographs that show people of any age celebrating the joy of reading anywhere and to submit them to our competition.

Submission is by upload to Instagram or Twitter with the tag #SLARead80 – all images so tagged will be automatically entered into the competition.

The competition is for entries from 1 September 2016 to Friday 23 December 2016. A selection of entries may be included as part of a celebratory publication during 2017.

There will be 2 prizes of the Reading Cloud (one for Primary and one for Secondary Schools)
“The Reading Cloud is a fantastic new online reading community designed to engage students, parents, teachers and librarians in reading for pleasure. The Reading Cloud uses the very latest technologies to really capture the imagination of students, linking real and virtual reading experiences to drive up literacy standards and develop core reading skills.”
NB Please note that the winning schools will require an existing Junior Librarian.net or an Eclipse.net hosted licence.

For individual junior and senior competitors the prize will be £80 worth of National Book Tokens to tie in with the SLA’s 80th birthday.

Full details and small print about the competition are available here – http://www.sla.org.uk/slaread80.php

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: competition, libraries, photography, reading

ACHUKAphoto’s Ist half of 2015: Jan/Feb

July 21, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Opening instalment of a 3-part look back at the first 6 months of 2015

http://photo.achuka.co.uk/blog/2015/7/ist-half-of-2015-jan/feb

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: look back, photography, portraits, resume, retrospective

Why do you take photographs, she asked

July 9, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

They were almost the first words she said to me.
“Why do you take photographs?”
I hesitated (I’m never all that swift with my replies) then mumbled something lame about liking to take pictures that are pleasing to look at. And went on to talk about always having had a fascination for cameras and photography – all quite inadequate as a response.
From that point on conversation became easier, and the shoot went well. Very well. One of the best two hours I’ve ever spent working with a model. As you might expect with a model the calibre of Nina Sever. (You will shortly be able to see some samples from the afternoon spent in the Cre8 studio space in Hackney Wick, in the shoot resume.)
Nina’s question may have been disarming, but it deserved a better response, and especially one that explains why I have spent the past eighteen months shooting almost exclusively portraiture.
The bit about always being fascinated by photographs is true. I would spend hours looking through black and white photos that my grandmother kept in a biscuit tin, many of them showing photos of her home and family in Melvich, a little place at the tip top of Scotland in Sutherlandshire (my great-grandfather was a shepherd on the Duke of Sutherland’s estate). My grandmother had left home at the age of fourteen for a life in service to various grand families in England, and had ended up in a Sussex village, where she was, when I was a child, a (semi-retired) lady-in-waiting to the ‘Commander’s wife’. Many of the photographs in the biscuit tin showed notable visitors to the country estate, including Princess Margaret.
For a young boy, photos such as these were windows into an exciting world of possibilities. We used to spend the majority of every school holiday at my grandmother’s house, and every Sunday we would go and have tea in the cook’s residence at the Court. My sister and I would dive straight for the cook’s collection of National Geographic magazines and when we weren’t busy giggling at photos of naked African tribes, I would marvel at the stunning photography from all corners of the earth. The Cook was a frequent world traveller and often had slides of her own to show us. My grandmother and parents would groan, but I never minded, happy as I was to look at any kind of still image.
I was about 10 when I got my first camera. It was a grey plastic box-like camera made by Kodak, and if I’m not mistaken took medium format sized film. We lived in Wembley and I would go out on my own with it on forays into the local park and side streets. Very few if any of those early snaps survive, save a few I took on family holidays.
My first 35mm camera was a Zorki4k, bought when I was about 18, and which I still have. It has lost its self-timer lever, but is otherwise still working.
I loved this camera and it was capable of taking some beautiful photos, but accurate focusing was awkward, and the proportion of good to poor shots when the prints came back from the developer was often rather disheartening.
I did not do my own darkroom developing till much later, by which time I was using a Minolta dslr. I used it almost exclusively for family photographs and in my work. I ran a photography club, took all the photographs for the school newspaper and for events such as sports day and performances.
The establishment of my children’s books news and reviews website ACHUKA coincided with the advent of digital photography. I bought myself a Sony point and shoot and from that point onwards all my book event (launches and parties) and school event photography was taken digitally, while I continued to use my two Minolta film bodies for more personal work.
As I replaced the first Sony digital camera with improved models I began to use the film cameras less. By the time I joined Flickr in 2005 I was shooting all my work digitally.
I had never been in a position to spend large amounts of money on camera bodies and lenses and so although I ogled the camera magazines and read reviews of the latest Nikon and Canon models I never felt in a position to invest the necessary capital to become the owner of what might be considered a full set of ‘pro’ kit.
And anyway much of the best and most innovative photography I was appreciating on Flickr was being taken with modest digital cameras of the type I was using myself.
When Sony announced its first digital dslr I was immediately interested because it meant I would be able to use my Minolta lenses with the a100 – not that I had many, but I would be able to supplement the kit lens with a 50mm prime and the lovely soft 75-200 Zeiss Jena.
After the a100 I moved to the a580 and now use a full-frame A mount a99. My portrait lens of choice with this camera is a Sigma 1.4 85mm.
Another reason I was rather slow to acquire professional quality gear was that for much of my early life I considered myself primarily a writer, rather than a photographer. While I was researching my novel about Melville and Hawthorne and later writing my biography of Tennyson, I had a membership card for the University of Sussex library and would bring back big bags loaded with relevant titles, but usually found room as well for two or three oversize photography monographs.
I had always studied the lives of artists (Gauguin, Van Gogh, Vuillard, Cezanne, Turner) and now studied the lives of photographers (Weston, Adams, Stieglitz).
Likewise I had always had an interested in fashion magazines, despite maintaining the most unfashionable personal appearance. Without being aware of it, I realise that what I was admiring was the styling and creativity that goes into the best fashion shoots.
I have a very low tolerance for non-figurative, abstract art. My favourite paintings are portraits, or at least paintings that contain a human figure.
So as soon as I had rid myself of a fulltime salaried position in education I knew that I wanted to devote much of that freed-up time to taking photographs. I had never been in a studio or worked with studio lights until February last year (2014). A short, very well taught introductory workshop and the highly functional internet modelling website Purpleport provided me with plenty of shooting experience with models and make-up artists.
Two or three group shoots and a couple of catwalk shows along the way and I was well and truly hooked.
I’m 63 going close on 64 but in portrait and fashion photography terms feel more like 23/24. I know I have some things to prove. Models are apt to refer to men in my age bracket who want to work with them but have no particular prowess as photographers as gwc’s (guys with cameras) so at one elementary level I want to photographs and build a portfolio that emphatically states “NOT a gwc”.
I have an ambitious streak and a desire, not to be approved, but to be respected for an ability to produce work that is worth looking at.
I like to take photographs because every now and then I feel I produce a photograph that stands the test of scrutiny – and that is a richly satisfying thing to be able to do.
Which is 1200+ words of saying more or less the same thing as my original inadequate muttering, which at least had the merit of brevity.
So, good enough after all: I like to take photographs that are pleasing to look at. Just that.
But thanks, Nina, for prompting these extra thoughts.
It’s time I summarised the shoots I have done in the first six months of this year, and will be doing that in three instalments – coming next, Jan/Feb 2015.

 

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: photography, question, why

Rainbows and mischief: Ryan Schude’s California dreams

July 6, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Ryan Schude

It was good to see a selection of Ryan Schude‘s carefully choreographed work featured in yesterday’s Observer magazine…

Pool parties, teenage riots, trailer parks, vintage Fords and a toaster in the bath … for a decade, Ryan Schude has photographed raucous snapshots of America, making hedonistic tableaux that turn partying into a fine art

via Rainbows and mischief: Ryan Schude’s California dreams – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: America, art, fine art, photography

Interview with Stefano Brunesci | MONOVISIONS

May 16, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

First inspired by the timeless portraits of Hollywood greats such as Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe, Stefano first began photographing women at the age of 13. After a short diversion into travel and landscape photography in his late teens Stefano returned to his first passion, editorial fashion, in 2007.

 

http://monovisions.com/interview-with-stefano-brunesci/

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: fashion, interview, photography, portrait, women

Between Two Worlds: The Photography of Nell Dorr

April 23, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

NellDorr

On Sunday, May 3, 2015 from 1 to 3 p.m. the Gunn Museum in Washington, Connecticut will host a free opening reception for their new exhibit, Between Two Worlds: The Photography of Nell Dorr.

This retrospective exhibit commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Horace Mann School’s John Dorr Nature Laboratory in Washington and the 75th anniversary of the Dorr Foundation. Nell Dorr’s photographs and artifacts from the Massillon Museum in Ohio, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Texas, and area residents are featured in this show. New touch screen technology has been incorporated into the exhibit allowing visitors to watch friends and descendants share their stories about Nell Dorr and the lasting impact that she made on their lives and our town.

via Between Two Worlds: The Photography of Nell Dorr – News – The Litchfield County Times.

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: family, photography

Forty Portraits in Forty Years

March 13, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

New York Times

Nicholas Nixon was visiting his wife’s family when, “on a whim,” he said, he asked her and her three sisters if he could take their picture. It was summer 1975, and a black-and-white photograph of four young women — elbows casually attenuated, in summer shirts and pants, standing pale and luminous against a velvety background of trees and lawn — was the result. A year later, at the graduation of one of the sisters, while readying a shot of them, he suggested they line up in the same order. After he saw the image, he asked them if they might do it every year. “They seemed O.K. with it,” he said; thus began a project that has spanned almost his whole career. The series, which has been shown around the world over the past four decades, will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art, coinciding with the museum’s publication of the book “The Brown Sisters: Forty Years” in November.

sisters1

Who are these sisters? We’re never told (though we know their names: from left, Heather, Mimi, Bebe and Laurie; Bebe, of the penetrating gaze, is Nixon’s wife). The human impulse is to look for clues, but soon we dispense with our anthropological scrutiny — Irish? Yankee, quite likely, with their decidedly glamour-neutral attitudes — and our curiosity becomes piqued instead by their undaunted stares. All four sisters almost always look directly at the camera, as if to make contact, even if their gazes are guarded or restrained.

sisters2

via Forty Portraits in Forty Years – NYTimes.com.

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: family, group, mono, photography

Elliott Erwitt Interview NYC

March 11, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Photography/Art Tagged With: interview, photography, video

BBC investigates whether Lewis Carroll was ‘repressed paedophile’ after nude photo discovery

January 26, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

Promises to be a very irritating documentary…

The BBC is to broadcast a controversial new documentary exploring whether Lewis Carroll was a ‘repressed paedophile’, on the 150th anniversary of his beloved children’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The potentially-explosive programme, presented by Martha Kearney, will explore the nature of Carroll relationship with children, and feelings toward the real Alice, the inspiration behind his most famous work.
The show, in which he is referred to by a contributor as a “heavily repressed paedophile”, will detail a newly-discovered photograph of a naked girl from a forgotten archive, said to show a “shockingly different” side to the author’s friendship with children.
…
It will debate whether new evidence shows Carroll, whose real name was Charles Dodgson, took an interest in sexualising young children and teenagers, and whether he should or could be considered a “Victorian Jimmy Savile”. [!]

…\

The picture, which is not comprehensively proven to have been taken by Carroll [my epmphasis], is believed to show Alice’s elder sister entirely nude, in a full-frontal pose described by Kearney as something “no parent would ever have consented to”.

…

Will Self, the author, said of Carroll: “Dodgson himself, I think, was a heavily repressed paedophile, without doubt [again my emphasis].

via BBC investigates whether Lewis Carroll was 'repressed paedophile' after nude photo discovery – Telegraph.

The documentary, The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, will be broadcast on BBC Two on Saturday, January 31 at 9pm.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: documentary, nudity, photography, sensational

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